Tag Archives: Pat O’Brien

Post navigation

Who is Peter Fry (played by a 12 year-old Dean Stockwell), the young boy at the center of the 1948 film, The Boy With Green Hair?

When we first meet him, Peter is a nearly mute child who has had all of his hair shaved off and who refuses to talk about either one of his parents. He’s mysteriously shown up in a small town and it’s only after a kindly psychologist (played by Robert Ryan) speaks with him that we discover that Peter is an orphan. Both of his parents are dead, victims of the Second World War. Fortunately, a retired actor named Gramps (Pat O’Brien) is willing to adopt Peter and raise him as his own. Gramps has all sorts of stories about the times that he performed in Europe. The film hints that Gramps might be a damn liar but he’s well-meaning, nonetheless.

Peter starts to attend school and slowly, but surely, he comes out of his shell. Soon, he appears to be just another carefree child and his hair even grows back. But then, one day, he sees a poster featuring other war orphans, children like him who have lost their families to war. When Peter overhears adults talking about how the world may go to war again and how there are now even bigger and more destructive bombs that can be dropped on America’s enemies, Peter start to get upset. What’s the point of going to school and preparing for the future if there’s not going to be any future?

One night, Peter goes to sleep. When he wakes up in the morning, he discovers that his hair has turned green!

Why has Peter’s hair turned green? It’s hard to say but the town is remarkably unsympathetic. It’s perhaps understandable that Peter’s classmates would make fun of him because they’re children and children are the worst about not being able to handle change. But not even the adults seem to be able to handle Peter having green hair! They want to shave his head again!

With even kindly old Gramps prepared to take away Peter’s green hair, Peter flees into the woods. There’s where he runs into the spirits of all the children who have either died or been orphaned by war. They have a message for Peter….

The Boy With Green Hair is both an antiwar parable and a plea for tolerance. There’s not a subtle moment to be found in the entire film but, considering that it was made at a time when the world was still in ruins and people were still getting used to living in the shadow of the atomic bomb, it’s perhaps understandable that the film would be a bit heavy-handed. It was, after all, made during a heavy-handed time. That said, the film actually works better as a parable about racism than as a pacifist statement. It’s kind of hard to see how Peter having green hair could convince people to pursue world peace but the way that Peter is ostracized for being different from everyone else is something to which many viewers could undoubtedly relate.

There’s some weird padding in the film. For instance, there’s a weird musical number involving Gramps that comes out of nowhere. Still, one can see why the film made an impression on some viewers. Dean Stockwell gives a sympathetic and, most importantly, naturalistic performance as Peter and the film’s message is a sincere one. One could easily imagine and also easily dread the prospect of this film being remade with Peter’s hair turning green over climate change. I’m a little surprised that hasn’t happened yet, especially considering the amount of coverage that was once given to Greta Thunberg, whose pronouncements and fame have made her a somewhat angrier version of the boy with green hair. Hopefully, a remake won’t ever happen, as the original film works just fine as it is. Not everything has to be remade.

In the 1934 Best Picture nominee, Flirtation Walk, Dick Powell plays a soldier who is constantly trying to go AWOL.

It’s not that Richard “Dick” Palmer Grant Dorcy Jr. dislikes the army. In fact, he’s actually getting a pretty good deal out of his enlistment. He’s been stationed in Hawaii, where he gets to go to luaus and hang out on the beach. He has a wonderful friend and mentor in the person of Sgt. Scrapper Thornhill (Pat O’Brien). Since this film was made in 1934, he’s not going to have to worry about going to war for another 7 years. He’s known as The Canary because he loves to whistle and sing. Everyone like Pvt. Dick Dorcy and that includes Kit Fitts (Ruby Keeler).

Unfortunately, Kit’s father is General Fitts (Henry O’Neill) and he’s none too amused about his daughter having a romance with an irresponsible enlisted man. He would much rather that Kit marry his aide, Lt. Biddle (John Eldredge). After he’s told to stay away from Kitt, Dick makes plans to desert so he can run off with her. Fortunately, Scrapper finds out what Dick is planning and he goes to Kit and warns her that Dick’s about to throw away his life for her. Not wanting him to get into trouble, Kit pretends that she never felt anything for Dick. When a broken-hearted Dick wonders why Kit rejected him, Biddle smugly informs him that he’s neither “an officer nor a gentleman.”

Stung, Dick decides to fix that problem. In order to become an officer, he applies for admission to West Point and gets in. Dick leaves Hawaii for the mainland and he does very well at West Point. He’s even put in charge of producing, writing, and directing West Point’s annual theatrical production. However, things get complicated with Gen. Fitts arrives to serve as superintendent. Coming with Gen. Fitts are both Kit and Lt. Biddle.

Deciding to express his angst through art, Dick writes a show about a female general. Since Kit is the only female at West Point, guess who gets the lead role? Though Kit is still in love with Dick, she can’t get him to listen to her explanation for why she rejected him. Will a stroll along West Point’s famed Flirtation Walk help fix things?

Well, it is a Dick Powell musical….

Flirtation Walk is a pleasant but forgettable movie. Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler make for a cute couple but neither one of them gives a particularly interesting performance and the bland songs don’t make much of an impression either. Those who are into military history might enjoy the fact that the film was actually filmed on location at West Point but, for the rest of us, this is a nice but not particularly memorable musical romance. For me, the most interesting part of the film was that it didn’t even attempt to be realistic when it came to Dick’s theatrical production. It’s a huge production, if never coming close to being as much fun as the one from 42nd Street.

Why was Flirtation Walk nominated for Best Picture? I imagine it was because it was a hit at the box office. It only received one other nomination, for Best Sound Recording. Regardless of why it was nominated, it lost to the far more memorable It Happened One Night.

Tomorrow’s the day when everybody’s Irish, and America celebrates St. Patrick’s Day! The green beer will flow and copious amounts of Jameson will be consumed, the corned beef and cabbage will be piled high, and “Danny Boy” will be sung by drunks in every pub across the land. Come Monday, offices everywhere will be unproductive, as all you amateur Irishmen will be nursing hangovers of Emerald Isle proportions. They say laughter is the best medicine, so my suggestion is to start your workday watching an underrated screwball comedy called BOY MEETS GIRL, starring James Cagney and Pat O’Brien, both members in good standing of “Hollywood’s Irish Mafia”!

Jimmy and Pat play a pair of wacky screenwriters working for Royal Studios on a vehicle for fading cowboy star Dick Foran. Pretentious producer Ralph Bellamy has enough problems without these two jokers, as rumor has it Royal is about to be sold…

I haven’t done one of these posts in a while, and since my DVR is heading towards max capacity, I’m way overdue! Everyone out there in classic film fan land knows about TCM’s annual “Summer Under the Stars”, right? Well, consider this my Winter version, containing a half-dozen capsule reviews of some Hollywood star-filled films of the past!

PLAYMATES (RKO 1941; D: David Butler ) – That great thespian John Barrymore’s press agent (Patsy Kelly) schemes with swing band leader Kay Kyser’s press agent (Peter Lind Hayes) to team the two in a Shakespearean festival! Most critics bemoan the fact that this was Barrymore’s final film, satirizing himself and hamming it up mercilessly, but The Great Profile, though bloated from years of alcohol abuse and hard living, seems to be enjoying himself in this fairly funny but minor screwball comedy with music. Lupe Velez livens things up as Barrymore’s spitfire…

This post has been preempted as many times as tonight’s State of the Union Address!

John Ford’s penchant for nostalgic looks back at “the good old days” resulted in some of his finest works. The sentimental Irishman created some beautiful tone poems in his 1930’s films with Will Rogers, and movies like HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY and THE QUIET MAN convey Ford’s sense of loss and wistful longing for simpler times. The director’s THE LAST HURRAH continues this theme in a character study about an Irish-American politician’s final run for mayor, running headfirst into a new era of politics dominated by television coverage and media hype instead of old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground handshaking and baby-kissing. It’s not only a good film, but a movie buff’s Nirvana, featuring some great older stars and character actors out for their own Last Hurrah with the Old Master.

Billy Jack, hero of the oppressed, goes up against an enemy he can’t wrap his head around – the politicians of Washington, D.C. in BILLY JACK GOES TO WASHINGTON, the final chapter in the Billy Jack saga. I know I harped on the fact that the last film, THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK , didn’t contain enough action, and this one has even less, but I liked this film better. It’s a remake of Frank Capra’s 1939 classic MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (Capra’s son is the producer), retooled for the modern era and casting Tom Laughlin’s Billy Jack character in the Jimmy Stewart role. You’d think a forty-plus year old political film would be dated, but truth to tell, not a lot has changed since then… if anything, it’s gotten worse.

When Senator Foley has a heart attack and croaks, the powers-that-be look for a patsy to replace him…

Faith and begorrah! You can’t get much more Irish than a film featuring Jimmy Cagney , Pat O’Brien , and Frank McHugh all together. THE IRISH IN US is sentimental as an Irish lullaby, formulaic as a limerick, and full of blarney, but saints preserve us it sure is a whole lot of fun! The story concerns three Irish-American brothers, the O’Hara’s, living with their Irish mum in a cramped NYC apartment. There’s sensible, levelheaded cop Pat (O’Brien), dimwitted fireman Michael (McHugh), and ‘black sheep’ Danny (Cagney), who’s a fight promoter.

O’Brien, Cagney, and McHugh

Pat announces his intention to marry pretty Lucille Jackson (19-year-old Olivia de Havilland in an early role), while Danny’s got a new fighter named Carbarn Hammerschlog ( Allen Jenkins , who’s a riot), a punchy pug who “every time he hears a bell ring, he starts sluggin”! Danny and Lucille ‘meet cute’ while he’s out…